Hi Reader,

Last month I told you I changed my business name at the worst possible time: mid-rebuild, website unfinished, visual identity unsorted. The timing was terrible. I did it anyway, because waiting for perfect conditions is how you stay stuck forever.

And for the past six months, every three weeks, I've been seeing a TMJ specialist. Every visit, I fill out the same intake form. Every visit, the hygienist asks about my pain levels, my sleep, my mood… all of which I had just written about on the intake form. Then the specialist comes in and asks again. Same questions, same answers. What that communicates—not intentionally, but unmistakably—is that tracking my own progress is entirely up to me. If I don't mention that something's improved or gotten worse, seemingly thrice, it won’t be known.

They're not negligent, and they're actually great at the treatment piece. They just haven't asked what every touchpoint—the form, the repeated questions, the handoff between providers—is communicating to the person on the other side of it. And while that gap sits unaddressed, every visit sends the same message to their patients: your care is yours to manage.

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​Read the full newsletter below.
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While You Wait

I think about this a lot when I look at how nonprofits communicate with the people they're trying to serve.
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Last year, a design organization I know accepted pro bono work from a member firm to build their annual conference website. Nobody set clear standards. Nobody specified accessibility requirements or established what the site needed to communicate before the firm started designing. What came back was visually striking and extremely hard to navigate—contrast ratios that failed basic accessibility standards, critical information buried under layers of navigation, and stylistic choices that seemed to prioritize flashy technique over intelligibility. I was part of the committee later brought in to audit the site and build the brief for this year's. The conclusion was uncomfortable: an organization whose entire mandate is to champion good, inclusive design had published something that actively failed the people it was meant to serve. They couldn't change it. It stayed up for the year. And every day it did, it kept saying the same thing about who was important to communicate with.

None of this is malicious. What's happening in both cases is that the gap between intention and experience has been sitting there doing its work, while everyone waits for a better moment to close it. Design isn't decoration. Accessibility isn't a compliance checkbox. UX isn't something you layer on at the end. They're the infrastructure through which your mission either reaches people or doesn't. When that infrastructure is broken and stays broken, someone absorbs the cost. It's usually the person your mission exists for.

Right now my own rebrand is getting whatever's left after the client work gets done. Which means it's slow, it's uneven, and I'm doing it in public, which is its own kind of vulnerability. I keep finding the same leaks in my own boat that I find in others’. A contract template with the old logo. A graphic I made six months ago that's already out of date. Collateral turning up around every corner, all of it needing to be touched.
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I could wait until I have more time, a cleaner strategy, a better moment. That voice that whispers "not yet, not like this, not until it's right" is seductive and reasonable-sounding. But we owe it to ourselves and to the communities and causes we're trying to help to keep moving forward anyway. So I'm chipping away.

The important point to remember, I think, is that none of these disconnections have to be fixed at once. The next right step might be as simple as looking at your homepage as someone who's never heard of you, or asking a community member to walk you through how they'd sign up to volunteer. Small, connected moves. That's exactly the kind of thinking I do with organizations—figuring out where the leaks are and what to fix first, before anyone spends a dollar on a full rebrand.

What would you find if you walked through your own materials as a stranger?

Rooting you on,
Reesa

• ​"Shitty First Drafts" by Anne Lamott
  Lamott wrote it best thirty years ago: "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life." All good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.
• ​"The road to imperfection" by Seth Godin
  If you need to be perfect, it's hard to press the 'ship it' button. The only way forward is through. We get to the work we seek by passing through imperfection.
• ​"How imperfect environmentalists can drive climate action" by Sheila Morovati​
  Morovati argues that perfectionism paralyzes people into climate inaction. The antidote isn't doing everything perfectly, it's shifting from "I'm only one person" to "I can start the ripple effect for change."
• ​This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate" by Naomi Klein​
  Klein documents communities that aren't waiting for permission or perfect conditions—they're refusing further extraction and building regenerative economies right now. Her argument cuts through: "Either we leap, or we sink." Waiting for the perfect moment means the decision gets made for us.

P.S. If any of this resonated with you, here are three ways you can let me know:

• Reply and say hello—I read every one.
• Forward this to someone who needs to hear it.
• Bring me in as a design partner when your team needs someone who actually gets it.

About Reesa​
​I work with people who give a damn—about their message, their mission, and the people they serve. Your message matters™.
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As an active member of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Canada, I'm proud to serve on its bright and tenacious Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee.

Beyond design, I'm a parent to a young girl gang, and move from weightlifting to vernacular jazz dance (though seldom together), along with reading, cooking, and reading about cooking. I'm always happy to talk about vegetarian food or my temperamental sourdough starter, Pudding.